Free Winter by John Marsden Page B

. . . oh dear. I don’t know what to say. I don’t think it was anything like that. I don’t think . . . ’
    â€˜But there’s something,’ I said. ‘Something’s bugging you. You’re not happy in your mind about it.’
    Looking away through the window, not to avoid my gaze, but as though he were trying to remember that day so many years ago, he said slowly, ‘I think it was the way Mrs Harrison acted. Your aunt. I mean, your great-aunt I suppose she’d be. She was there when it happened. She, and Mrs Stone. They were the only ones. There was something about her, about both of them . . . of course they were terribly distressed, terribly . . . your great-aunt and Phyllis were very close . . . but still, even so, they just shut down so much . . . ’
    â€˜Shut down?’
    â€˜Yes. Look, I can’t put my finger on it . . . ’ He shook his head, briskly, as though he wanted to clear away the confusion of his thoughts. ‘Oh, it was nothing. They were just upset. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be making it worse for you than it is already. Don’t take any notice. I’m just an old man having daydreams.’
    â€˜Who’s Mrs Stone?’
    â€˜She was housekeeper for your parents. She works for Mrs Harrison now.’
    And that was all I got out of him. A few minutes later I had to say goodbye. It was time for my security guard to escort me home.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    T he next morning I got a sense of what the departure of Ralph and Sylvia meant in practical terms. Like, really practical terms. Since I got back I’d done enough work with Ralph to have a fair idea of the daily routine. I still hadn’t thought about how to replace him—didn’t have a clue—but I figured that in the short term I could keep the place going OK. I got up at seven fifteen and by a quarter to eight I was outside and ready to work.
    The first stuff was easy. Most of the cattle were in good paddocks, but there were three paddocks where Ralph had been hand feeding. I got the biggest wheelbarrow from the barn and dropped a couple of bales into two paddocks and one into the third, where there were only four cows with their calves. There was something very satisfying about it. They got so excited when they saw me coming. All the bellowing and grunting and groaning—it reminded me of boarding school in Canberra. They nuzzled the bales so enthusiastically that they knocked over the barrow. I almost had to push them away so I could cut the twine. In the last paddock I actually lost the twine. The trouble was that the twine was the same colour as the hay, and when it dropped in among the hay on the ground I couldn’t see it at all. At first it was a joke, but after a while I started getting seriously worried. The cattle were munching away with such speed and sheer happiness that I could imagine the twine disappearing down their throat as quickly as the hay. I was combing around on the ground, getting cattle shit on my hands, and cursing the idiot who had tied those bales with yellow twine. I found one length of the stuff, but then a moment later was sure I saw the other one going down the throat of one of the cows, like an Italian momma eating spaghetti. I grabbed for it but all I did was alarm her. She backed away fast and the last bit of yellow was sucked into her mouth.
    Oh no, I thought. Oh Jeez. What do I do now? Get the vet out? Great start to my career looking after Warriewood.
    Then I decided maybe I was wrong, maybe it wasn’t the twine I’d seen, just another length of hay. So I started searching again, and about four minutes later found it.
    It wasn’t exactly a great thrill, just a relief. I sat back on my heels looking at the cattle and thinking, I’ve sure got a lot to learn.
    I went and let the chooks out for their daily graze, threw some wheat around for them, checked their pellets and